Customer Reviews

Fiesta Latina (Spanish Cover)

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It's originally recorded in Spanish & for English it has Luly's voice over over the original music & Spanish instruction. It actually works pretty well.
INTRO: 1 min
WARM-UP: 5 min - Merenge-Cumbia
merenge, mambo, cha-cha, shoulder rolls, hip twists/circles, basic leg stretches
WORKOUT: 34 min
Salsa - 8 min
salsa to side, cross step, two twists with the mambo again, hip circles, & repeating of all the moves here & in the warm-up several times
Samba - 8 min
cha-cha, hip twists/bumps, 2 different style samba moves
Norteno - 9 min
they are wearing white cowboy hats & diff color bandannas around their neck. you learn a 3 point turn on one side only, 3 two cowboy looking moves & repeating.
Flamenco - 9 min
fast marching/stepping, stomping/step, bullfighters poses w/simple turn, small lunges move & repeating.
COOL DOWN: 5 min - Tango
walking to the side, walking front/back, shoulder rolls, leg stretches like warm-up, hip twists, tango moves
Credits - everyone taking turns dancing & everyone does well, all pretty good dancers & all athletic

This is set on a gray wall/floor with butterflies projected on the walls in very light pastels that look cute. The production is very professional, good sound, lighting, though the camera moves a bit too wildly for me to make it look more stylish & interferes with keeping up.
There is Luly Rivas Mitchell in the front/teacher who you see on the cover, it actually has Jennifer Galardi (Dance off the Inches series, 10 Minute Solution series & Prevention Fitness series) though she doesn't talk here at all or anyone else. It has also one other girl & FOUR guys in the back. The real songs are different for each section, not a looped beat like most dance fitness dvds.
There is no detailed instruction, some moves are done half time &/or broken down, Luly does mostly simple moves figuring people will pick it up easily. This is more then enough for those who've had even a couple dance classes or done several dance fitness dvds such as myself. I got it almost perfectly the first time especially with all the repeating of the routine in each section. Those who haven't or have trouble with most dance fitness dvds may want to be cautious about buying this.

This was cute/fun overall, but there were a lot of cons:
Camera - moving in all different angles & too many close-ups sometimes
Repeating of steps - a little too much repeating in every section, could have been more moves per section
Music - the first 2 sections were great, I hated the lame accordion music in the Norteno section, the music for the Tago was the right feel, I just didn't like the style of most of the songs unlike Zumba's (LOVED IT). To be truthful, I don't like Latin music overall unless very dancy & newer stuff. I still have Feliz Navidad by Jose Feliciano in my head lol from every holiday season.
Flamenco - not a workout, more posing then anything
Dance moves - many I didn't like, though learned a couple new ones. I kept comparing to many I own already, so this mostly would be an unneeded addition.

For my cardio exercise, I prefer to dance. This is my most used latin dance dvd on my shelf. It is well-chaptered with 4 short sections of different dance styles --- salsa, samba, norteno and flamenco. Merengue is included in the warm-up and tango in the cool-down. I like the variety and the moves are not that difficult. Instructor is enthusiastic and cues fairly well. I work up a nice sweat especially after the samba and norteno sections. This dvd gives me a fun cardio workout.

The workout is very simple, I would not even call work out, but it is fun and introduces few moves and steps of different type of dances. The biggest drawdown, the camera focuses too much on faces. The workout mostly about steps that involves lower body, especially legs, but camera most of the time shows participats upper body, which is so annoying because have no idea what moves they are doing and I was constantly behind the moves because camera shows too much upper body and you kind of have to guess what moves they are doing with lower body. Not recommended. There is better choices of dance workouts.